


On the Segregation of Our Dearly Departed

by reggievass



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Bees & Beekeeping, F/M, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 13:27:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reggievass/pseuds/reggievass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The honey drips right through Her shoulders to splat on the floor.<br/>Honey used to preserve dead pharaohs, gods on earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Segregation of Our Dearly Departed

**Author's Note:**

> written for a prompt on Graveyard Smash: a spooky autumn ficathon on sister-wife's livejournal:  
> Elementary, Joan Watson & Sherlock Holmes.  
> The different ways houses can be haunted.

Tell me about London.

Joan Watson says, Tell me about London, and smiles,

Now I know it was a woman.

It frightens him, that curve of her lip, her eyes as she figures him out

Because she’s right.

There was a Woman.

There was The Woman.

There is.

And he knows, he knows, he knows Watson cannot have the truth in her surgeon hands, but she is too close, and he is hurting, sober and dry.

So dry he wants beeswax hands to soothe his soul.

Because the bees on the roof are his bees. His bees from before, from life, from London.

These bees are his bees carried over to rest on this roof, to buzz above his head, to drip down onto her shoulders,

Joan’s shoulders.

Not the Woman’s, not any longer because ghosts are by nature incorporeal.

The honey drips right through Her shoulders to splat on the floor.

Honey used to preserve dead pharaohs, gods on earth.

She is his God, constructed of love and fear.

Sherlock Holmes has believed in love at first sight since he saw Her.

Now, he has to believe in love at second sight as well.

He thought it was London, but it wasn’t.

It wasn’t because She is gone, and London is gone, and the drugs are gone, but still he sees Her in the wings, a specter reclining.

Buzzing in his mind, the chapter. Buzzing in Her home, the hive.

He knew when he came back to the drone of drones no handcuff stretch could free him from the sound.

There is no queen to find in this hive.

For all his searching, these bees dance only at the whim of a dead Woman’s soul.

She is real for all She is dead.

She is here for all Her corpse is London.

He crashes a car to feel glass on his face, bruise of the belt, but it frees him no more than the rings 'round his wrists.

No amount of banging his head against the wall of stubborn facts, of stupid people can knock free the unfortunate, unhallucinated truth.

It wasn’t the city being haunted.

It isn’t the house.

Night after night, he sits before a queenless hive and ignores the regal ghost encamped beside him.

He sits until Watson finds him on the roof.

This is where he comes when it gets to be too much. Too, too much to be away,

And he knows, he knows, he knows it will always be too much.

He tries to resist, but She pulls him, his dear, dead Woman.

On the segregation of the Queen

A book, he says to Joan as she sits beside him, I’m writing.

Up here, on the roof. Up here, in my mind.

It’s a good excuse for sitting listening to the words of an invisible Queen.

And he is listening

To his Woman

To his God

To Her Ghost


End file.
